ABOUT OUR MARKET LAMB - (Onalaska Meats 360-978-4007 - Kevin & Mary Jones)
Our philosophy for raising lamb is closely linked to nature's plan, the raising of sheep and market lambs that have the minimum human intervention. This means choosing a breed or breeds of sheep that can gain weight on grazing pasture grass (and baled grass during winter from the same field). We have chosen to cross Bluefaced Leicester (http://www.bflsheep.com/images/breed.htm) with a Border Leicester (http://www.ablasheep.org/what-is-a-border-leicester/) to form a "mother breed" that has the genetic advantage of cross bred vigor plus retaining both breed's ability to gain weigh quickly and efficiently on lower quality pasture grass.
For a terminal ram (the market lamb's sire) we chose a Suffolk and Hampshire cross ram. This The Suffolk and Hampshire breeds of sheep are one of the very fast growing and muscular breeds of sheep. This cross should add a bit of hybrid vigous and will produce faster growing sheep with good muscle development.
Choosing this breeding strategy allows us to grow market lambs without using unnatural supplements such as grain or COB (corn, oats and barley). For the benefits of eating grass fed lamb see the following link: http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm.
Another marketability reason of choosing to raise grass fed lamb is cost. Finding the right number of sheep to populate our pasture ensures both the health of the sheep and the health of the pasture and environment.
Below is a Lamb Cut chart obtained from the American Lamb Board
website (http://www.americanlamb.com/). When purchasing some of our lamb, this chart may be able to assist you in choosing the most appropriate cuts.
ANTIBIOTICS
Antibiotics have been used in commercial livestock operations as additives to daily feed (grain). This speeds up the animal's rate of weight gain. It also taints our food supply and greatly contributes to a pathogen's resistance to antibiotics which therefore makes it much more difficult to find effective antibiotics to treat our illnesses.
As said earlier, we do not feed our market lambs grain or Cob. Antibiotics are only used on sick animals that have infections. If these animals are lambs, we do not market them to the public. Only antibiotic free lambs become market lambs.
